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Freed by DNA, Now Charged in New Crime

MADISON, Wis., Nov. 17 - As three men sat nervously on a stage, preparing to recount their nightmarish journeys through a justice system that had sent them away for crimes they had not committed, the moderator had a plea for the crowd in an auditorium here.

Let us not talk about Steven Avery, another man now sitting in a county jail charged with killing a young woman. Not tonight. Not again.

"This event is not about that," the moderator, Lawrence C. Marshall, a law professor who has spent years trying to free wrongfully convicted prisoners, urged. "Tonight we are here to talk about the much bigger issue."

For days, however, the case of Steven Avery, who was once this state's living symbol of how a system could unfairly send someone away, has left all who championed his cause facing the uncomfortable consequences of their success. Around the country, lawyers in the informal network of some 30 organizations that have sprung up in the past dozen years to exonerate the falsely convicted said they were closely watching Mr. Avery's case to see what its broader fallout might be.

Two years ago, Mr. Avery emerged from prison after lawyers from one of those organizations, the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the University of Wisconsin Law School, proved that Mr. Avery had spent 18 years in prison for a sexual assault he did not commit.

In Mr. Avery's home county, Manitowoc, where he was convicted in 1985, his release prompted apologies, even from the sexual assault victim, and a welcoming home for Mr. Avery. Elsewhere, the case became Wisconsin's most noted exoneration, leading to an "Avery task force," which drew up a package of law enforcement changes known as the Avery Bill, adopted by state lawmakers just weeks ago.

Mr. Avery, meanwhile, became a spokesman for how a system could harm an innocent man, being asked to appear on panels about wrongful conviction, to testify before the State Legislature and to be toured around the Capitol by at least one lawmaker who described him as a hero.

But last week, back in rural Manitowoc County, back at his family's auto salvage yard, back at the trailer he had moved home to, Mr. Avery, 43, was accused once more. This time, he was charged in the death of Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer who vanished on Oct. 31 after being assigned to take pictures for Auto Trader magazine at Avery's Auto Salvage.

After her family searched for Ms. Halbach for days, investigators said they found bones and teeth in the salvage yard, along with her car. In the car, they found blood from Mr. Avery and Ms. Halbach, they said. They also found her car key in the bedroom of his trailer, they said, and, using the very technology that led to Mr. Avery's release two years earlier, they said they identified Mr. Avery's DNA on the key.

"This case has blown us away," Stephen M. Glynn, a Milwaukee lawyer who has represented Mr. Avery in a $36 million civil lawsuit against the former prosecutor and former sheriff in the original sexual assault case, said of the new charges against Mr. Avery. "I haven't taken that hard a punch in a long, long time."

"This lets down so many people," Mr. Glynn went on. "This case became something that could have had an enormously positive effect on the criminal justice system in this state, but now that's up in the air."

Around the nation, DNA testing has led to the exonerations of 163 people since 1989, including Mr. Avery, said Maddy deLone, executive director of the Innocence Project in New York, where Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld were pioneers in the movement. Only one of those exonerated is known to have been convicted of a serious crime since being freed, Ms. deLone said.

Like leaders in similar groups, Ms. deLone said she had recently heard about Mr. Avery's case and had talked to colleagues about it. "While this is a horrible, horrible crime," she said, "we really don't think that it will have an effect on these efforts or on our responsibilities to vindicate innocent people."

At the Wisconsin Innocence Project, leaders said the new accusations against Mr. Avery should not now be linked to his earlier wrongful arrest and release. Keith Findley, co-founder of the Wisconsin group, which describes Mr. Avery's case in its brochure, said the group's intent was not just to release the innocent but to find truth, and properly punish those truly responsible for crimes.

"This is a very emotional time and a very emotional event," Mr. Findley said. "But this should not affect what we do."

Still, for advocates accustomed to being praised as fighting on behalf of the falsely accused, the backlash here has been unavoidable. On talk radio and on Internet Web logs, critics have said that without the Wisconsin Innocence Project's efforts, one young woman might still be alive. Some said Mr. Avery's criminal record revealed telling signs of violence -- with convictions, for example, for burglary and cruelty to animals -- long before his 1985 sexual assault conviction.

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At the trial, the strongest evidence against Mr. Avery came from the victim. She identified Mr. Avery as the man who had attacked her as she jogged on a beach. She had seen his face just 8 to 10 inches from her own, she said, and had noted his height, his broad hands with stubby fingers, his hair. The first thing that had raced through her mind in the attack, she told the jury, was that she needed to "get a look at this guy."

Years after the jury found Mr. Avery guilty, his lawyers pressed to have new DNA testing done on pubic hair found on the victim after the attack. The tests revealed not only that the hair did not belong to Mr. Avery, but found that it matched another man, who had lived in the area and who had since been sent to prison for a sexual assault. The case was held up as a perfect example of how eyewitness testimony, even the best intentioned, could simply be wrong.

Even before the sexual assault conviction, Fred Hazlewood, the judge, now retired, who presided over Mr. Avery's case, said Mr. Avery's criminal record showed that he "had a real potential" for violence. "But he served his time," Judge Hazlewood said, "and you can't convict someone for what he might do."

Family members said last week that they were certain Mr. Avery was not guilty of the new charges of first-degree intentional homicide and mutilating a corpse. The authorities were wrong before, Mr. Avery's father, Al, said, and they are wrong again. The evidence, Al Avery said, was planted.

When Steven Avery finally got out of prison, his father said, he had lost his wife and family and found himself living in a tiny ice shanty once meant for winter fishing. Just surviving after so many years in prison was hard enough, Al Avery said.

"Now it's starting all over again," Mr. Avery's father said as he looked around the salvage yard that law officers had searched for days.

Mr. Avery's mother, Dolores, said she could see the way people were looking at her, again, in the grocery store and on the streets here near Lake Michigan.

"He's innocent," Ms. Avery said. "I know it in my heart."

Soon, she said, she plans to call the Wisconsin Innocence Project, the lawyers who helped her son once before.

"There are 36 million reasons why they should be doing this to him," Mr. Avery's brother, Chuck, said, referring to the award his brother was seeking in his lawsuit.

The future of that suit now appears in question. Depositions have been postponed. Mr. Glynn said that he still believed that his client had a strong case, but he acknowledged that the case had grown complicated. What will potential jurors think now?

The arrest has changed other plans, too. Lawmakers who had pushed to have the state pay Mr. Avery more than $420,000 for his wrongful arrest have grown quiet. And the bill of changes -- to the way the police draw up eyewitness identification procedures, conduct interrogations and hold onto DNA evidence -- is no longer called the Avery Bill.

"The legislation is very important and very sound for our justice system as a whole," said Representative Mark Gundrum, a Republican who helped organize what was then called the "Avery task force."

"But this does detract a little bit," Mr. Gundrum said. "Obviously, we're not talking about Steven Avery anymore, not highlighting his conviction."

And plans for a "grand, glorious" signing ceremony for what is now simply called the "criminal justice reforms" package, he said, seem remote.

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A version of this article appears in print on November 23, 2005, on Page A00001 of the National edition with the headline: Freed by DNA, Now Charged In New Crime. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe